Leaks are so bourgeois
“These leaks were no part of my original design.”
“Rates, rates, who cares about rates? I’ll get you the money.”
– A mortgage broker friend of mine, 1982, when a mortgage went for 18%
What becomes an architect most? Grand conceptual designs that make wonderful cityscapes, or buildings that do not leak? Or are these two things not supposed to be either-or?
That seems to be the imperious, Roarkian defense offered by flamboyant designer Frank Gehry, as reported in a deliciously funny New York Times article:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has sued the architect Frank Gehry and a construction company, claiming that “design and construction failures” in the institute’s $300 million Stata Center resulted in pervasive leaks, cracks and drainage problems that have required costly repairs.
As every maintenance person knows, the greatest threats to a property’s long-term physical viability are water, children, pets, and fire, in that order.
The center, which features angular sections that appear to be falling on top of one another, opened to great acclaim in the spring of 2004. Mr. Gehry once said that it “looks like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate.”
Because it’s located in my town, I’ve been in the
He wants practical space
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston last week and first reported yesterday [November 6, 2007 — Ed.] in The Boston Globe. It accuses Mr. Gehry’s firm, Gehry Partners, based in
Negligence is a legal standard, and an evidence-based one. For a university to give itself a black eye by punching its architect is an indicator of profound dissatisfaction.
“He sued me!”
In an interview, Mr. Gehry, whose firm was paid $15 million for the project, said construction problems were inevitable in the design of complex buildings.
“These things are complicated,” he said, “and they involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong. A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small.”
That’s what you were paid fifteen million smackers to prevent, sir! You’re the expert, remember?
“You still owe me two hundred dollars!”
Allow me to remind you, Mr. Gehry, what you put on the main page of your Web site:
Frank Gehry established his practice in
Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners is designed personally and directly by Frank Gehry. All of the resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s partners are available to assist in the design effort and to carry this effort forward through technical development and construction administration. The firm relies on the use of Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the bidding, fabrication, and construction processes.
Does that sound like the description of a man whose eponymous leader shrugs, “the chances of it getting done without some misstep are small”?
“I think the issues are fairly minor,” he added. “M.I.T. is after our insurance.”
“The insurance policy’s right over there.”
Let’s be clear: MIT wants its building fixed. Fixing it costs money, money that MIT has laid out. I’m sure MIT does not give a hoot whether the money comes from Mr. Gehry or from his professional insurer.
Mr. Gehry said he had received several expressions of support from people at the institute. “The professors and the people that we all did the building for are sending me e-mails dumbfounded that their institution is doing this,” he said.
Nancy will tell you that nothing makes a home owner feel more helpless than lying awake at night hearing rain gurgle along your gutters, in between your roofline flashing, and hence into your buildings wall spaces, where it stains the wallpaper, rots and softens the plaster and sheetrock, and wraps the structural wood.
Pamela Dumas Serfes, an M.I.T. spokeswoman, said, “As a matter of policy we don’t comment on pending litigation, and our lawsuit speaks for itself.”
Mr. Gehry has had to address problems with his buildings before. In December 2004, for example, he agreed to sandblast parts of his $274 million Walt Disney Concert Hall in
In the current case, he is joined as a defendant by the Stata Center’s builder, Skanska USA Building Inc., a New Jersey-based subsidiary of a Swedish company, Skanska AB. Jan Saragoni, a spokeswoman for Skanska
Construction is complicated, and when structural defects are at issue, defendants point fingers at one another.
The guilty parties all went that-away!
Mr. Gehry said “value engineering” — the process by which elements of a project are eliminated to cut costs — was largely responsible for the problems.
“There are things that were left out of the design,” he said. “The client chose not to put certain devices on the roofs, to save money.”
When in doubt, blame the contractor and the client.
Thus it’s customary for the plaintiffs to sue everybody, so there is no party that can be the scapegoat with impunity. The result is that innocent defendants have no loyalty to the party they think is guilty:
But Paul Hewins, executive vice president and area general manager of the company, told The Globe: “This is not a construction issue. Never has been.”
Neither of us is an architect
Mr. Hewins said Mr. Gehry had rejected Skanska’s formal request to revise the design for the center’s 350-seat outdoor amphitheater, whose poor drainage has been a large part of the problem.
Rejecting a formal written request, and being sued after having done so? Sounds like Mr. Hewins and Skanska will be providing testimony very damaging to Mr. Gehry.
The suit says that within months of the center’s opening, it essentially started coming apart, with “considerable masonry cracking” in the amphitheater’s seating areas.
In late 2006 and in 2007, M.I.T. hired a designer and a contractor to repair the amphitheater at a cost of more than $1.5 million, the suit says. The institute also discovered additional problems, its court papers say, like “sliding ice and snow from the building’s window boxes and other projecting roof areas, blocking emergency exits and damaging other building elements.”
In my experience, some architects like their designs so much they are oblivious to the realities of topography, weather, and maintenance. Mr. Gehry lives and works in snow-free Los Angeles, so he may not fully appreciate how destructive is water because, almost unique among compounds, it expands when it freezes. I recall having to do investor services on a 320-apartment family development in upstate
I could have told them not to build it on a hillside
I have heard (perhaps apocryphally) that every home Frank Lloyd Wright ever built leaked.
They never leaked on the plans
Yesterday, brownish green mold was visible on the exterior of the
“It is a joy to work in this building,” said Rodney Brooks, a professor of robotics, “and I know that many of its occupants feel the same as I do about it. We asked Frank to give us a building that fostered communication, and he delivered.”
There’s no question that the
That’s no excuse, however, for chronic leaks and cost overruns.
Is this the price of genius?
The customer should not be forced to choose one or the other.
Back when the Boss was working in her
I forgot you’re not bound by ordinary rules
Architecture isn’t just about designs and concepts. It’s also about plumbing, roofs, and leaks.
After the water’s gone
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